Finding Hope: Light in the Darkness

There is a light at the end of the tunnel; metaphorically speaking, anyway. I make no metaphysical claims to an afterlife, much less a “good” one. But in our present reality, things will get better; so much so that the trials and tribulations of our modern catastrophe will seem like no more than troubled dreams of a past almost unthinkable. A new world and a new paradigm is just on the horizon; a world of decency and democracy, a world with strong checks on hate, warmongering, and terrorism. A world where all are if not accepted at least tolerated and allowed to live freely as themselves in an open society without fear of violence or threat. A world without dictators or despots and the wars they wage for the sake of their smallminded fantasies and compensating-for-something egos. All of these things and more are in humanity’s future; we just have to get there.

How can I be so optimistic given everything I’ve written and warned about for coming up on a year now? How do I know that the future is so bright we’ll have to wear sunglasses at night?

Well, for starters, I outright reject pessimism. I have traveled those paths before into the very depths of despair at the nature of existence; a contrivance of horror that can be almost impossible to escape. And I have at times found profound truth in philosophical pessimism of the likes of old Schopenhauer, 20th-century Zapffe, and the modern protégé Ligotti. But it’s not the full story. It can’t be. Any metaphysical system that fails to take into account the aesthetics, the beauty of existence—is incomplete. And there is great beauty to be found in the human condition, just as there is great ugliness, suffering, and atrocity (to be fair to Schopenhauer, I think this is what his philosophy came closer to than anything in the end).

My philosophy is not based on suffering, nor on beauty. It must necessarily capture every aspect of humanity in order to be whole. I have found no satisfactory solution to the question of existence; but I know that it must be roughly equivalent parts good and evil. So, to wit, I am not a pessimist. Nor am I an optimist; not entirely. From the first paragraph it may seem I lean that way instead—but I have no illusions about the dark side of humanity. Evil has been with us a very long time, and even in a so-called “utopia” humanity would never be perfect.

Instead, my faith in the future comes from my faith in humanity. I am not so naive as to believe human progress is inevitable; but it damn well may as well be. Humanity f—ing rules. Have you seen us? We split the fracking atom. We adapt and overcome—and have for hundreds of thousands of years. We are not substantially biologically different from our ancestors many thousands of years ago; in other words, human intelligence has not substantially increased: knowledge has. Wisdom has. We have built ourselves up on top of culture and society and the accumulated knowledge of billions of lives. Given how incredible it is just to be typing a sentence in a language, sitting in an apartment, sipping whiskey. Life on this planet has never had it so good.

And of course, life could have it so much better. But look how far we’ve come, dude. We practically invented democracy twice, and this time it’s sticking around. There are more free societies and free people than ever before in history. 

There are also many millions that live under authoritarian rule. There have been for a very long time many subjugated peoples, in many places and in many ways. We saw with the collapse of many an ‘Eastern Bloc’ regime the devastation that was done to their own people. It turns out that sometimes violent revolutionaries are not the ‘good guys’. They weren’t in Tsarist Russia, they weren’t in Imperial Iran, they definitely weren’t in Italy or Germany circa 1920s-30s. They weren’t in Gaza in the mid-to-late 2000s. All of these “revolutions” (sometimes under the guise of democracy—to be clear, nothing is possible without some level of popular support) led to warmongers and/or genocidal terrorists coming to power; which, as you can imagine, is not a good thing.

Do you know what generally people want more than anything? Peace for our family and for ourselves and friends to be left alone. Certainly not everyone, but I think the majority of humanity over the course of our existence has wanted basically those things. It is almost always the fringes that push and prod the unyielding mass in the center to do their bidding…in one way or another. Democracy, simplified, is the way that that ‘center mass’ refuses the will of the powermad dictator and whatever minions they have “coerced” into the regime. So, naturally, when a dictator does gain power through whatever means, the first thing that must go is democracy.

Stability, then, is a delicate thing to achieve. One must have a bit of luck in the setup; not only in how the system is crafted, but in who is doing the crafting. Fail in the crafting, and it is unlikely to last very long as a stable democracy. Fail in the crafter, and it may fail before the start.

Succeed though…such as with the ‘American experiment’ that irrevocably changed the world. The monarchs of France literally lost their heads over it. A republic, if you can keep it. I say this as a proud American, but also as someone who has observed how many liberal democracies around the world incorporate in various ways the ideas our own revolution embodied. I say the more the merrier. Come join the party; freedom is pretty great.

Free the people and you also free productivity. The market economy and liberal democracy are practically made for each other; but I won’t talk economics any more than is absolutely necessary. People are prosperous-ish. People are successful-ish. People are happy-ish. People have never had it better in the entire history of humanity. And we’re getting even better—we really are—slowly but surely. Across the world, in aggregate. The occasional backslide such as when a sovereign nation is invaded by their neighbor is worrying, but as of yet not catastrophic.

By every conceivable metric, NATO nations have nothing to worry about regarding military threats; at least in the immediate future. But so long as defense doesn’t take a backburner, all the free nations of the world need do is wait—and let time do the rest. Freedom will come to Iran. Putin is looking frail. It’s undecided if Xi Jinping will continue to side with Iran and Russia in the ‘Axis of Evil’, but it would be nice if his Communist Party of China would free Hong Kong per the stipulations of the Joint Declaration with the United Kingdom that still govern the territory until 2047. And also if he would stop threatening to invade Taiwan, that would be great. You do not want to do that. From an American, just trust me.

The petty dictatorships of the Kim family and Maduro are likewise bound for the dustbin of history. The people will be free. Humanity is stronger. We have a destiny written into the very fabric of the cosmos. Your callousness and cruelty cannot change the raison d'être of the human race.

…and on that note, let me end with the words of someone that really will live forever in the soul of humanity. Take it away, Carl Sagan: “The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves…”

It’s up to us. We have the power to make this life a wonderful adventure for everyone. We need only reach for the stars, and we will have it.

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